


Ring of Keys and Other Stories II: Alternative Universe/Timeline

by seaofolives



Series: Ring of Keys and Other Stories [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Content, One Shot, POV Chirrut Îmwe, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 10:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10717323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives
Summary: Set in modern day Hong Kong.





	Ring of Keys and Other Stories II: Alternative Universe/Timeline

**Author's Note:**

> Please forgive the vague depictions of medical stuff.

When the doctor had put down his exam results, slipped off his glasses and looked him in the eye, palms on the table, Chiro knew then what it meant. 

Funny that between the two of them, he was the one who offered a smile that might buoy crumbling spirits yet. “It’s okay. I wasn’t counting on a miracle,” he assured him.

The doctor sighed, clearly troubled by his stubborn optimism. Well, what other choice did he have? He’d tried crying, complaining, even getting depressed over it but all they ever gave him was a terrible headache after a night drowned in various forms of alcohol. “We tried our best,” he offered, in what he recognized as a sign of solidarity. 

Chiro broke out in a grin. “We did,” he agreed. “Can you tell me how long I have, though?”

With a deep sigh, the doctor glanced at his exam results again but he was already shaking his head. “I’d say…you’d be lucky if you made it to six months.” He shrugged as his patient nodded. “But again, I’m cautioning you. There is no certainty with predictions.”

“I think we both understand that perfectly clear.”

“If I can offer you an advice, though,” the doctor cleared his throat, putting his weight on his desktop, braced on his elbows. “Take this time to adjust your lifestyle, and see the things you want to see. While you still have the chance.”

“That’s good to hear,” Chiro said, grinning again. “At least I don’t have to worry about your exorbitant fees anymore.” The doctor shook his head, chuckling. “I’ll send you a postcard from Paris.”

That was probably the last time he was going to see him again. 

He stepped out of the doctor’s clinic with a distinctive feeling that he’d just closed the door to his old life, and walked right into a new chapter that had been a long time coming. Something he’d desperately tried to avoid but now that it was there, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief. The kind that came with sweet surrender after living in the jungle for so many years. Suddenly, everything felt so delicate. So soft at the edges, like a newborn world. The air he breathed in felt sharp and clear, as if it hadn’t been filtered through so many ventilation channels. 

That was the first time he’d noticed that his doctor had changed his name plaque from the old, cracked plastic to a new, polished silver. He felt sorry he hadn’t mentioned it during his last checkup. 

But he didn’t linger; with a step back, he started down the set of lifts, into his new life. Suddenly, there was a growing list of things he had to do before his time was up. He pulled out his battered leather wallet from his back pocket and searched within for his octopus card. Best get it out now before he held back a stream of commuters, trying to look for it between his receipts and his notes…

“Hey, you,” a man’s voice echoed slightly in the clean corridor behind him. Slightly rough on the edges, a baritone perfect for oration. “You in a black leather jacket.”

Chiro turned, a bit embarrassed that he hadn’t realized it was him. The man who called was somewhere his age, dressed simply in a blue shirt with a logo in Japanese on his chest and a pair of jeans, faded as a matter of style. He had a closely shaven head, a pair of rimless, round glasses and ears that foretold a long life. If one believed one’s grandmother. 

Ears raised a sheet of white paper, folded in four quarters. “Never walk out of a hospital without your prescription,” he advised him wisely.

Chiro laughed, opening his fat wallet again to inspect its contents before be marched back to Ears and retrieved his note. He must have missed him in his excitement.

No, he definitely missed him. The corridor only had one exit and it was the one he was walking out of.

“Thank you,” he said as he opened up the paper, and smiled, all teeth. It was the brochure of some new phone shop he’d passed in one of the malls in Wan Chai, printed from a home computer and then photocopied with a handwritten correction. 

He folded it in quarters again. Walking backwards, he raised the brochure between his fingers and replied, “Never look at another man’s prescription.” Ears’ brows furrowed and he frowned. Chiro turned back on his way. 

Seems he was off to a good start.

⚭

By the time Chiro had gotten back to his flat near Tin Hau station, a modest bachelor pad that was 5 years well past its prime but kept clean thanks purely to his efforts, half the day had already gone by.

The mew came while he was in the kitchen, attracted by the ringing of his keys that hit the glass table after he’d put down his grocery bags. “I’m here,” he called back to the sound, shrugging off his jacket. “Mobius?”

Mobius appeared with another meow, a cream tabby cat very happy with his diet, slinking through the open doorway en route to the man. His appearance made him smile widely. “There you are!” Chiro said triumphantly. He pulled up his jeans to crouch, then extended both his arms to the cat who ambled over excitedly, like a pet who knew that a treat was forthcoming. “Sorry I’m late, I lost track of time.” There was no reply, of course, except for the cat’s two forepaws which he lifted onto one knee so that the man could pet him. “I went to the bank, and I think I might have gone a bit overboard in the grocery mart. Money could be a problem soon, but I guess I’ll figure something out.” Mobius made a purr, eyes shut tight in comfort while he massaged his head. 

He grinned, contented. “Lucky for you, you’re a cat who doesn’t have to worry about these things. As for me?” His voice softened, fingers now scratching the contented cat’s chin. “In six months or less, I’m finally going blind.”

⚭

“But that’s too bad…and it’s such a shame, Mr. Yim. The children love you.”

Even if they didn’t, it really _was_ a shame to lose the money coming in. He sat in the president’s small office overlooking the green garden, still dressed in the white tangzhuang he sometimes wore during his sessions with the children. Outside, those young bodies in their colorful gym wear, some even in proper changshan dresses or shirts like his own, moved patiently, carefully to the music they put on for their Tai Chi lessons. They were surrounded by a sparse wall of nurses in white, visiting parents and some kids in wheelchairs who couldn’t always join but still enjoyed watching. 

Chiro smiled apologetically. “I don’t want to leave the kids, too, but I need to look after myself for now. I’ll keep coming back for as long as I can still see, but my field of vision is getting narrower and narrower…”

“Of course, that’s completely understandable,” the president said but she still looked and sounded disappointed. “In any case, you can still come and visit. You will, won’t you? Even when you’re…”

“Blind?” He grinned. “It’s a shame but nothing to be ashamed about.” The president looked uncomfortable. “But of course, I will. Once I’ve learned how to live without my eyes…maybe I can come back and continue the lessons.”

“Oh, that would be good!” The president sounded relieved, for whatever reason. It was true that they were acquaintances before—he wouldn’t have gotten this job if they weren’t—but there must be hundreds of Tai Chi practitioners scattered around Hong Kong Island, hell even within Wan Chai District alone. He didn’t think she’d have much trouble looking for a suitable replacement,assuming this was the plan now. “Have you told the kids?” she asked. 

He couldn’t answer quickly enough. His spirits faltered a little, just as the melody playing from the radio in the garden was rising. “I’ll tell them before I go,” he decided. He’ll just have to find the right words first.

⚭

The great thing about speaking with children was that they had no sense of gravity and dread. It only took him all of five minutes to satisfy the bubbling curiosity of the young ones seated around him on the grass, and then he was saying goodbye to them as they headed off, back to their rooms to rest.

Perhaps it helped that he hadn’t been with the children’s hospital all that long, which certainly didn’t explain the multitude of pictures he had with them. His first class, lots of birthdays, going away parties for the kids finally going home. 

Counting the faces he was going to have to leave behind from one of his class photos, he realized suddenly that he didn’t know what to do with his photographs once he’d lost his sight. And he was so fond of them. He lived alone but he’d surrounded himself with pictures of his friends, his travels, himself in some of the best places he’d once only dreamed of as a child obsessed with movies like Indiana Jones, as many his age had been. But unlike many others, he’d gone the extra mile and come to Cairo and Giza in Egypt, and Petra and Wadi Rum in Jordan. His last trip had been to see the Uluru at sunrise before his eyes had started to fail him, and then the money he was saving up to go to Monument Valley had gone to his exams and medications. Now he didn’t know how he could earn them back in time before he went blind. 

Too bad. Soon, there would be no way he could see them anymore, the way he might still be able to read with braille or audio devices. At least not in the near future. In the meantime, in the interest of self-preservation, he’d had to mark off the furniture and things—all his beloved photos and picture frames—he’ll have to give away, sentimental value or no. His flat was tight enough as it is without the extra bulk. Where exactly they were going to go, though, was going to have to be a problem for yet another day. 

His eyes were starting to hurt from the glare of the laptop; he’d been on it for the past hour or so, scouring the Internet for support groups and government benefits he might take advantage of. He pushed the lid shut, set the machine down on the floor next to him and stretched out, reaching to replace the class picture on the glass table just over his head, near the left arm of the couch he laid on. Not for the first time, he wondered if being blind meant living his days like this forever. Just lying down, gazing around his apartment…or not, as there would be nothing to see once his eyes had gone.

Soon enough, he would have to start calculating the steps that would take him from the door to the kitchenette, the bathroom just next to it, how many paces across his living room, past his shelves and drawers and the TV on his way to his tiny bedroom at the end of the whole flat. 

The timid jingle of a bell, like it was attached to a pillow that had fallen off his bed, distracted him from his thoughts. Every tiny step after it was marked with quieter rings. 

At least he knew that the collar he’d bought Mobius worked. Chiro whistled, and the cat appeared from his bedroom with a crimson band around his neck, one with a slight V-shaped drop where the bell was attached. Whistling again, he teased him, holding out his left foot. 

Mobius took the bait with careful eagerness. He ambled to those wiggling toes and raised a paw to bat them only to be scooped up by the same foot and raised high. Sheer feline talent, ability and luck had kept him from listing as he slid down the length of his owner’s leg. 

Chiro caught him at the bottom with both hands and lifted him up like one would a lion cub. Mobius issued a tiny mew of complaint. He laughed. 

“What are you going to do once I’ve finally gone blind?” Chiro asked him. “I’ll have nothing else to do, and you’re stuck with me forever.”

⚭

“This coming Friday,” he continued with his parting reminders, “we’ll be starting one hour earlier becaaause...it’s—!”

“Kelly’s birthday!!” The chorus came like a wall of bells all ringing as one as the wind blew, as if these kids hadn’t been sick all along or that the cure for all illnesses really could be found in the promise of cake. Chiro, in a respectable red-lined black changshan set, flailed in surprise but quickly ducked and plugged his ears to the delight of the children. 

“Not too loud, not too loud! You’ll make me both blind _and_ deaf.” He grinned at their laughter and giggles. “Okay, okay, I’ll see you all on Friday.”

“You’ll still be here?”

Chiro bent closely to look at the girl’s wide-eyed surprise. “Yes. I will. Don’t forget to dress in red. Bye-bye!”

He straightened up and waved to the children who turned and waved back while the nurses and their parents ushered them back in the hospital. He stayed behind to watch them, perhaps for one of the last times possible. 

“Mr. Yim!”

He swung left, searching for the voice beyond the limits of his blurred vision. The president had to call him a second time before he spotted her crossing the grass, a tiny figure in a white coat and a green spotted dress next to a man in a dark khaki suit and glasses. She looked like she was going to stumble in her leather pumps any time now but seemed happy to do it. 

“It’s good that you’re here. There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.” She was all diplomatic niceness when she gestured to the man in a suit next to her which Chiro took as his cue to put on a smile for the introduction. “This is Mister—”

“Baz. No need for formalities.”

His smile froze in place. He could barely believe his eyes. Apparently Ears had a name, and his name was Baz. 

Baz smiled at him. “Seems like we always meet in hospitals,” he said. 

Chiro’s cheeks relaxed a little. “I hope you don’t believe in superstitions, Mr. Baz.”

“Just Baz, really.”

“Baz has been one of our staunchest investors since the hospital was built. This is Mr. Chiro Yim,” the president interjected in time, hand towards him. “He’s been coming to teach the children Tai Chi.”

Baz gestured to him. “Does it work? Tai Chi?”

“Depends on two things:” Chiro ticked them off by his fingers. “One, if you believe in it, two, if it’s convenient.” And with that, the formalities were concluded with polite laughter. 

Right on cue, Baz pulled out his iPhone and peered at the screen through his glasses. Contrary to what Chiro would have imagined during their first meeting, he looked very smart, and very busy in a suit. He figured he had another meeting coming up soon, and that the introduction was made only for the sake of courtesy. “Okay, we’ve got a table,” Baz announced. “Mr. Yim, lunch?”

“What?” he spat, surprised to be wrong. What happened to the meeting? “Is that an invitation?” Was that his name? 

“Depends on two things:” Baz ticked them off by his fingers. “One, if you’re fine with Asian fusion, and two, if it’s convenient.”

⚭

It was convenient, of course. Free lunch was always convenient.

And never mind that he came in a black leather jacket, a plain white shirt, a pair of well-loved jeans and off-white chucks that had never been washed since the day he bought them. As was the proper way of caring for them but the place looked like its menu contained only offerings with prices that were inversely proportional to the amount of food that was placed on the plate. That in spite of that, the place was still so full, Baz had to wait for a table to be freed, was something he had not yet fully comprehended.

He gazed around the restaurant after their orders had been placed and the president excused herself to make a call. A general salmon color, brightly colored flowers, white cornices and table cloths, Parisian cutlery, wide windows, sunlight streaming in. Slouching forward, arms crossed loosely on the tabletop, he asked his host, “Are you a regular here?”

He caught him drinking water. Baz shook his head. “First time,” he said, setting his glass down next to his plate. “It’s not really my taste but my friends never shut up about it. I mean…” His fingers drew circles around the air. “Friends around the erm…”

“Business,” Chiro finished for him. He couldn’t stop himself from grinning when he said, “Sounds like you’re hesitant to call them friends.”

“I just don’t want any misconceptions,” Baz grumbled. “Why do you ask? You’re looking for a place to date your girlfriend?”

Chiro’s beam went straight up to the corners of his eyes. “Why do you ask that?”

Baz pointed a finger to his hands. “No ring. But typically, you should be married by now.” He folded his arms over the table. “So maybe you have a girlfriend.”

“Wanna make a bet?”

“I’m already paying for lunch.”

“So you don’t want to make a bet.”

Baz looked at him dead-eyed, lips tight enough to make it seem as if he was trying to chew out a reply, maybe from the inside of his cheek. 

Best not to push him. “I don’t have a girlfriend,” he finally answered. “And I don’t have a boyfriend, either, in case you’re also curious.”

Baz nodded, satisfied. 

“And you?”

Baz raised his naked fingers, flipping his hands back and forth. “Nothing to see here.”

“We’re birds of the same feather, then. Young, wild and free,” Chiro said, and smiled when Baz guffawed. It was such an honest sound, he’d even call it _pure_. He didn’t know many who could be so genuine without risk of being vulgar. 

“You have a way with words, Mr. Yim.”

And he looked so kind and candid, like the lines on his face had been etched permanently by unabashed laughter. He didn’t know how he didn’t see this before. Perhaps he’d been too intimidated by the suit and the restaurant. They’d made him look cold, impersonal but his eyes looked soft. They gave him the face of a friend. 

“Just call me Chiro,” he said. “All my friends call me that.”

⚭

Baz Ma. That was his full English name.

Born in Guangzhou, he was a philanthropist and a businessman with an admirable, if humble, net worth. Many of the pictures he found on Google had Baz either shaking hands with someone in a sharp suit or passing goodie bags, planting trees or addressing a room full of young children in a plain shirt and jeans like from when they’d first met. The only time both sides of Baz had ever crossed the proverbial line was in pictures of the Qiantang tidal wave back in 2013, where he was shown carrying an injured boy, presumably to safety. Baz was drenched to the bones with a cut on his left cheek, right there on the crest. He’d married in secret some time before but divorced his wife one year later. They had no children. 

Many of the businesses he was involved in were hospitals, schools and food providers. He was also the president of two foundations aimed to the poor, but for all his good intentions, he could not escape the suspicions that he had connections to one of Hong Kong’s triads. 

Chiro couldn’t believe it. That kind face, a gangster? He tried to imagine it. He supposed it couldn’t really be said these days,they came in all kinds of shape and form. 

But he remembered the laugh, his serious responses. He didn’t crack jokes or make witticisms. Somehow he thought it was more important for the man to be truthful than to be clever or funny. It was a brand of honesty that could only have been built in good conscience, and not on the shoulders of murderers and slaves. 

He remembered that Baz said he didn’t want any misconceptions about his friends in the business…

He must have been staring at the screen for too long, the headlines an ugly accusation, because suddenly, his timer was ringing and suddenly, he realized that he was sitting in the glass table in his kitchenette, waiting for his dinner to cook. He hurried up to the stove to finish it.

He set down his bowl of noodles just next to him while he read on, clicking and scrolling. 

The rumors started when a known triad financier was spotted in one of Baz’s charity events, even pictured shaking hands and clapping shoulders with him. The amount donated was later leaked to the press who, being gracious, granted it the wildfire attention it deserved. Half-page coverages, one minute spots in all news shows. 

The foundation’s defense was that the financier had fulfilled his prison sentence accordingly and had expressed his desire to turn a new leaf, therefore there was no reason for them to judge him and doubt his intentions. That seemed only to fuel the rumors that Baz was really working hand-in-hand with the triad although all evidences brought to light had been circumstantial by far. It was an open case as far as the interested public was concerned. 

Chiro pushed down the lid of his laptop and sat back in deep thought. He listened to Baz’s laughter again and recalled his easy countenance. He preferred it if he was only “Baz”, that high-end restaurant was not really his taste…everything about him just screamed _down-to-earth_ , even though the man felt like he was so quiet, he wouldn’t even be caught screaming. To see him as a gangster needed a pretty good working imagination…

Or maybe he was just too blind to see it…

⚭

“…eighteen…nineteen… twenty…”

He almost jumped when his raised fingers felt the smooth plastic face of the door he knew belonged to his bathroom. Excitement filled him and tempted him to open his eyes but he managed to fight down the impulse at the last minute. Collecting his breath, he searched for the round door knob and gave it a good twist. 

Everything that followed were actions instilled by so many years of living in that place. He reached for the switch at the side to flick it on, listened to the muted humming of the light before it cut itself off abruptly. In place of looking, he felt for the smooth tiles of the wall and scraped at the textured ones with his bare foot. 

Chiro closed the door, stepping out. That was one blind route of many mastered, at least. Now onto the next. 

“One,” he began again, “two…three…”

He slid and laid his feet carefully and gently across the floor and felt a vague leap of pride when he felt the rough face of a cardboard box against his toes. One point for Chiro Yim for being cautious! He inched aside until he was free of the obstacle and continued. “Seven…eight…” He raised a foot. 

_Bang!_ went his knee when it met the acquaintance of a glass table. 

The noise Chiro made had scared Mobius out of one of the many open boxes he’d taken residence of, half-filled with his stuff. He didn’t see this but he heard the panic, the scratch of claws and the stumble for safety. His eyes flew open to a confusing world of blurred vision and brief clarity that made him wonder for a second there if he had somehow also hit his head. With the help of adrenaline, a ringing pain and some form of animal instinct, he managed to hop towards his empty couch, carrying his knee on his hand. 

When he dropped himself to the cushion, he noticed he was crying. But damn, that really hurt! He wished he could ask his cat to get an ice pack from the freezer. He wanted to try but his leg still felt numb and weak from that bitter argument with the furniture and he was just in no mood to try. Careful fingers probed the injury. By some blind luck, he hadn’t broken a bone but he’ll need an ointment before the bruise turned into a monster. 

He’d already started to move his injured leg up onto the couch when his phone rang where he’d left it on the blasted glass table that had once carried precious memories in plastic frames. Chiro hadn’t even thought to check the number and the empty face on the screen, too absorbed by the inconvenience and his knee, before he took the call and grunted out, “Hello?”

“ _Good morning, may I speak with Chiro Yim?_ ” the voice asked, deep as an ocean. 

Chiro might have choked on his spit. He wondered again if he’d hit his head. “Baz?” he croaked. How did he get his number? 

“ _Oh good, it’s you. You remember me,_ ” Baz went on without preamble. “ _I got your number from Cindy. Are you okay?_ ”

“I’m—” Chiro looked at his knee, as if he could see it through his track pants. Could Baz get him an ice pack? “Yes, just fine. Just surprised. How did umm—” Cindy, the president. Right. “You umm…you need—can I help you with something?”

“ _If I called at a bad time, I’ll just call again later._ ”

“No! No, ummm…” He closed his eyes, trying to gather his thoughts. “I’m not busy, I’m not doing anything right now.” Well, not anymore after he banged his knee like an idiot. “Is there something wrong?”

“ _N, no…_ ” Baz began. “ _...the truth is that I wanted to ask you what days you come in to teach Tai Chi to the children._ ” He spoke quickly. 

Chiro wasn’t sure he’d caught that at all. “What?”

“ _I’d like to watch. The children. I mean,_ ” Baz coughed, “ _Cindy said…that the children have shown good improvement since you started coming in. I’d like to watch._ ”

Straightforward, although he’d stumbled a little along the way. Not a hint of arrogance, of his rank and wealth demanding the service and obedience he expected and deserved. 

“The president didn’t tell you?” That is to say, he couldn’t have asked the president? 

“ _I…_ ” Baz contemplated the rest of the sentence. “ _…forgot._ ”

Honest, genuine, down-to-earth Baz. Despite himself, Chiro smiled at this man who could not deceive to hide his lack. What a character. “I go in Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and every other Saturday.” He thought he heard the man breathe a sigh of relief. “My classes start at 10am but on Saturdays, I have another session at 2pm.”

“ _Sounds good,_ ” Baz said, with a faint sound of pen scratching on paper. “ _So tomorrow, then?_ ”

“Tomorrow.”

“ _Lunch?_ ”

Another pleasant surprise. “Sure,” he accepted, delighted. “Sounds great.”

“ _Good, good. I’ll see you then._ ”

“See you.”

Baz hung up. Chiro set aside his phone and sat back, thoughts now turned to tomorrow’s meeting. It made him feel vaguely touched, and giddy in a way that made him feel like a favorite child. Baz had gone out of his way to set this meeting, like the first lunch. There had been no need for it but he’d gone and done it, anyway, as if it was the most natural thing to do. He decided he was a good friend to have and wondered if all his friends thought this way of his generosity. 

And if it was true that he was a gangster? Well then, so what? That was his business. If it came with free lunch, then he could be the leader of all triads for all he cared.

⚭

Spine straight, shoulders low, chest open. In his years of being a Tai Chi practitioner, these were reminders Chiro no longer needed to tell himself as he swept his arm smoothly, freely in the air and somehow transferred the movement to his bending knees without a hitch, even with the bruise. Tai Chi, to him, was no longer even just automatic or mechanical. It was so ingrained in him, it felt like he’d molded his very bones and muscles to move only in the forms of Tai Chi no matter what he did. Eating, bathing, sleeping…it was an exaggeration but a proper one.

That Baz’s mere presence in a handsome dark suit could put a chip to his rhythm was more than a little bit unnerving. It was like walking in a shoe that was too tight in one foot, the pinky toe was starting to blister. You could still do it, you could still walk without limping, but you were still acutely aware of the pain, bothersome and ever-present. This had never happened to him before. In the past, he’d led classes bigger than the ones he managed these days and he’d never had any trouble with them at all. 

This had never happened to him before.

⚭

A full house, the noise of conversation and cutlery a steady wall of sound, with budget meals that could fit everyone’s wallet and fill their stomachs. As it turned out, Baz’s taste was none other than Cafe de Coral.

It was strangely encouraging to watch the wealthy businessman shrug off his stylish blazer to resemble the Baz that he first knew: a plain black shirt, some nice jeans and a pair of sneakers.

“I’m so hungry,” he groaned, picking up his chopsticks as he inspected the roasted duck cutlets looking glorious on a bed of rice. He looked up to his guest. “Is this fine with you?”

It was very fine with Chiro. Compared to some deconstructed version of some old time favorites like the one that expensive restaurant had served, a bowl of char siu pork and rice suited him much better. He felt very comfortable. And he also felt very hungry. 

“Dig in,” Baz invited and didn’t wait to do the same. 

A few seconds of respectful silence were accorded to the food and their empty bellies, almost like a prayer before the meal but in something of a reverse. 

Chiro was the first to break it, pausing for a sip of cold tea which gave him a great vantage point of his host demolishing his lunch with shrewd diligence. “So how bad was it?” he asked seemingly out of the blue. He indicated Baz’s half-finished food when the man had cast him a curious look. “The food from that restaurant near the hospital. You ate like girl on her first date.”

Baz snorted. His rhythm broken, he suddenly slowed down. “I told you, it just wasn’t my taste.” It was a diplomatic response, he supposed. He realized too late that it would be difficult for his host to admit that he had taken him to a restaurant with poor taste. “I grew up eating this stuff.”

“So we really _are_ birds of the same feather,” Chiro observed happily. “Now you know that if you want to impress me, you don’t have to look far.”

Baz almost choked on his duck meat and gulped down a mouthful of coke. “Is this how you are with all your friends?” he asked as soon as he was able.

“Only to the ones who keep buying me free lunch.” Chiro grinned.

Baz eyed his grin before he returned to his meal. “Consider it my thanks for what you do for the children. Cindy told me you were leaving soon.”

That he was. Suddenly Chiro counted all the free food he was going to miss. As if they really were part and parcel of his employment.

“Is it the pay?”

“No, I umm…” Chiro picked on his food a bit. “I’ve got other plans.”

“You moving?”

How could he tell this total stranger that he was going blind and he needed to take care of himself? Well, what the hell. Chiro decided to humor him. “Traveling,” he said, smiling. 

“Oh?” In went a whole piece of duck, bones and all. Chiro was impressed. Baz chewed with his whole mouth as he asked, “Where to?” before his eyes fell back to his bowl. 

The answer was easy, of course, even if Chiro hadn’t really been thinking about it these days. Since his diagnosis, he’d learned to be realistic about his expectations but, he supposed, as with childhood dreams, it never really went away. He might have sounded a bit dreamy when he said, “Monument Valley.”

Baz stopped mid-chomp to look up to him, half-gaping. Chiro prepared himself to explain but the man interrupted him. “In Utah?”

Chiro was surprised. “You know it?”

“The sandstone buttes.”

“Exactly,” he said, sitting back a little. Furrowed brows over glasses looked straight into round nearly blind eyes. “There’s not many here who know that place.”

“My thoughts exactly.” In a surprising twist of events, Baz had put down his deep spoon to wrap one hand over the other, just under his chin. He’d stopped eating just to ask him, “When are you going? Where are you staying?” The questions came quickly, one after the other.

“I’m still thinking about it,” Chiro responded in a shock. He hoped he didn’t come out sharp and defensive, he hadn’t expected Baz to be all that interested about it. “Maybe the summer,” he said, picking up some stray details from what little of his old plans he could remember. “But I haven’t looked for lodging yet. I might just look at Airbnb.” Hoping to escape Baz’s full attention like a liar caught red-handed, he started to eat again. 

Baz did not. “How long are you planning to stay?”

Chiro sighed, gazing upwards to think. “I don’t know,” he shrugged, “a week? Have you ever been?”

Baz shook his head. “I was just curious. Like you said, it’s not a place everyone wants to visit.”

“The way you’re asking these questions, I’m no longer surprised,” Chiro said, flushing with relief at the end of the sudden interrogation. He gestured to Baz with his glass of tea. “You sound like you own the place.”

“No, I didn’t mean to make it sound like…hey now, are you cracking jokes again?”

Back in his element, Chiro grinned. Baz groaned and rolled his eyes. Chiro laughed. The poor thing probably couldn’t tell a trick if it stared at him in the face! “Well, when I was a kid,” he said all of a sudden, as if to console a sulking child, “Indiana Jones was my favorite. Ever since, I’ve always wanted to go to those kinds of places. Sometimes I think it’s a little silly.” He shrugged. “But some things just never leave you.”

Baz’s face carried the softness of a smile when he nodded. He straightened up suddenly to search for his glass of coke. “I’ve never told this to anyone,” he picked it up to sip, “but I’m still obsessed about those martial arts films. I’m not just talking Hollywood action films, I’m talking,” he spread his hands sideways, like he was holding a giant egg, “proper martial arts films. Bruce Lee. Jet Li. You know the stuff. That’s because when I was young, I wanted to be a shaolin monk.”

“No, really!” Chiro laughed, shifting a little in his seat to look closer at Baz who nodded sagely. “But what happened?”

“Well, my parents didn’t give their blessings,” Baz said, leaning back. “So now,” he patted the top of his thin hair, “I just look like one.”

“But you’ve never learned?” Chiro shrugged. “I mean any kind of martial arts?”

“I tried but,” Baz shrugged, “I guess it’s just not for me. I had no time for it, and I was too old.”

“Sounds familiar.” Chiro grinned. “I wanted to learn how to shoot a gun because of Indiana Jones but I never got to it.”

“I could teach you.”

His brows flew. “You could? You know how to shoot a gun?”

“I have a license, if that bothers you.”

It wasn’t supposed to, he should be anything he wanted to be. But suddenly, Chiro was glad that they’d chosen this noisy place for lunch, where no one would be too interested to listen into a conversation between two middle-aged men. 

Baz was still watching him, waiting for a response. His eyes looked as soft as Chiro remembered it. Just then, he noticed a scar on Baz’s left cheek.

He remembered the picture of the man carrying a boy, soaked through and through. 

The smile was slow to come, but it was his defense now. Baz’s brows rose slightly, like he was expecting to be surprised. Chiro hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed. “Are you recruiting me?” He looked a lot more amused than he intended. 

Those brows fell again in a confused knot. “I wasn’t…trying to recruit you for anything,” he said after a stunned silence. “Am I missing something?”

“No, it’s…” Chiro sighed, eyes falling to his half-finished food. How should he say this? It shouldn’t have to matter but he felt a keen impulse to apologize when he confessed, “I’d been reading the news.”

Those eyes were still painted by uncertainty but the penny dropped soon enough. “Oh,” Baz said suddenly, throwing his hands up, falling back. “Oh that one? Yeah, that was just one time,” he said. 

“I’m just clearing the air,” Chiro explained quickly before things got out of hand. 

“That’s okay, it was just a matter of time,” Baz sighed, shifting forward again, clearing his throat. “I guess it gives off that image, doesn’t it? Well, if I truly were a gangster, would you stop seeing me if I asked?” He looked at Chiro, straight in the eyes, brows raised, lips drawn to a line.

It gave Chiro the impression of a cornered animal, ready to spring. He didn’t mean to put him on his toes, and now he truly felt sorry. He didn’t know if he ought to apologize, though. Baz didn’t sound like he was looking for sympathy. 

Actually, he didn’t know what Baz was looking for anymore. A challenge? He looked like he was daring him to go on at his own risk. Or maybe he was just reading too much into it?

He felt uneasy. He was at a loss. Things had gone cold and sour all of a sudden when they were already sharing childhood stories like friends. Smirking a little, Chiro tried to repair the damage, anyway. “Would you kill me if I did?”

That joke fell flat. “Depends if you’re trading me for my enemies,” Baz said smartly. 

For the first time, Chiro didn’t know what he could say. He’d ruined a good thing, and there was nothing he can say to deny that. 

He was a stubborn fool, though. So he tried again. “Then I’ll keep coming when you call.” He even put in a smile for good measure. 

Baz smiled back. But then, he’d said, “Let’s eat. Food’s getting cold.” And Chiro knew that the connection between them had snapped completely.

⚭

Had he offended him? He couldn’t believe it.

He’d been stumped it since he and Baz had parted ways, Baz getting on his car, him walking to the MTR station. Easy enough to say that Baz had cared what he thought of him but why should he? They weren’t…

Well, they were friends. Of a sort. They were employer and employee, they were lunch buddies. Maybe. 

Did Baz have friends? It was a thought that occurred to him suddenly, lying down in bed, staring at the dark. Mobius’ curled form was pressed up next to him, breathing but unmoving even with the hand idly scratching his back. The distinction between friends…from the business and…well, perhaps the “realer” sort seemed to be important to Baz. He’d never told his childhood dream to anyone but him. At the time Baz had said that to him, he hadn’t given that admission much thought, being too thrilled by what was shared. Now those words echoed back to him with meaning, and he was shocked that he hadn’t noticed it at first. 

Why him, though? Was Baz concerned that he might have truly felt silly about his own boyhood tale? That was the only thing he could think of. Baz couldn’t believe that they were truly birds of a feather, could he? He wasn’t naive, he couldn’t be. If he really _were_ a gangster… 

But if he _wasn’t_ …

Well, what did that change? The fact of the matter was that he couldn’t stay silent about this. If he had offended Baz, then it was up to him to do something about it. He sat up on his bed and reached for his phone to call the man. 

It rang endlessly. Now Chiro wondered if Baz was refusing to answer his phone after his carelessness. For the first time, he felt irritated at himself. Why did it matter to him if Baz was a gangster? Was it because of the scar? The picture? Could he not believe that a man could both be kind and a gangster? He remembered the way he’d looked at him. That cornered animal. 

The ringing stopped. “ _Chiro? Chiro, is everything okay?_ ”

Chiro froze. Why had he called again? He swallowed. “Umm…hi. Everything’s okay…sorry, are you busy? Should I call another time?”

There was a long pause. “ _Chiro, do you know what time it is?_ ”

He didn’t. He’d packed away his desk clock because he didn’t want to trip on its wire while he was busy redecorating. He was yet to buy a new one that would suit him in the future. 

“ _It’s 2 am._ ”

Well, that would probably explain why he was under a blanket. 

“ _I have to be in the airport in three hours._ ”

“Oh,” Chiro said. He didn’t know what else to add. “Umm…so I guess…business is doing great?”

Another pause. “ _In a manner of speaking._ ”

Chiro chewed his lip. 

On the other line, Baz sighed. “ _Chiro, is everything okay?_ ”

With nothing better to do, he smiled in the darkness. “I called because I thought we could meet again for lunch on Friday. My treat this time. I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of your generosity.”

“ _You know I don’t._ ” He sighed again. “ _But I’ll still be in Sydney on Friday. I fly back on Saturday._ ”

“Next?”

“ _This one that’s coming._ ”

Chiro thought quickly. 

“ _Maybe we could—_ ”

“How about coffee, then? My treat. You can pay in souvenirs.”

“ _Which part of that statement is your treat?_ ”

“The part where I buy us coffee!”

“ _While I pay you with a koala keychain. It’s the same thing!_ ”

“It doesn’t have to be a koala keychain, it can be kangaroo jerky.”

“ _Are you serious?_ ”

By now, Chiro was grinning widely. “I used to like to mix them in my congee. It would be good to have some for breakfast again.”

“ _That’s disgusting,_ ” Baz said. “ _Anything else?_ ”

“Throw in a koala keychain while you’re at it.” Baz groaned. Chiro laughed. “So we’re set, then? Maybe 3 pm? Will you be coming to the hospital?”

“ _I can meet you there._ ”

“Then I’ll let my fans know there’ll be no autograph signing on Saturday.”

“ _You have a strange hobby, Chiro._ ”

Chiro’s cheeks were hurting now. “Okay, I’ll see you on Saturday, then. Goodnight, Baz. Don’t stay up too late, you have to be in the airport in three hours.”

“ _You’re telling me?_ ” Baz sounded incredulous. “ _Actually, don’t answer that. I’m going to hang up now before you say anything else. Don’t call me in three hours. Goodnight._ ”

Chiro didn’t say anything, as the man had asked. The call ended. 

He set his alarm to three hours before he laid back down his pillow and tucked himself in. Baz warned him not to call in three hours but he didn’t say anything about literally giving him a wake up call after. He just wanted to be helpful! Baz should just think he was making up for calling him late by making sure he made it to his flight on time. 

He felt giddy and mischievous, and proud of himself which were not exactly qualities of a man who’d called to ask for forgiveness. In fact, he hadn’t even bothered to try at all but they were meeting for coffee now. Nothing had been ruined. 

As it turns out, he really was just reading too much into Baz’s reactions. What a fool he was…

⚭

It was exciting, at first, to have found a new friend, a new unlikely friend, whose constant company gave him something to look forward to when so many things had since lost a bit of their luster. Baz always came—when he could—to watch his Tai Chi classes, afterwhich they always went for lunch and when Baz’s time permitted it, afternoon tea, because they hadn’t run out of things to talk about yet. Otherwise, he spent his days at home, memorizing blind routes and cleaning up, paving ways for a safe sightless future. Some days, he also went around, seeing the sights, a tourist in his own city and country.

And then that stopped. All it took was a matter of weeks, just as his doctor had said. Finally, he had reached a point where it was dangerous to be away from his usual routes on his own. 

It was harder, then, to wake up every morning with the same optimism and fighting spirit he had once borne. There were so little things to motivate him these days. He knew he still had so many to be thankful for, but he could only remember so little of them now. 

With a happy, half-hysterical, half-maddening tone, his phone suddenly rang, somewhere in the blurred sea of his vision. “ _Baz calling,_ ” his phone said. “ _Baz calling._ ” Staring up the ceiling, he imagined that beautiful photo of his flashing on his screen, that one of Baz raising a dumpling to his face like a smile. 

He could remember so little, but at least he remembered some of them. “Answer,” Chiro commanded, smiling when his friend’s voice came on. 

“ _Oi, Chiro, get up! You’ll be late for work. Keep away from your fans, we’ve got lunch after._ ”

“You’re going to make me lose them, Manager.” Chiro grinned. 

“ _Lose your fans or lose your lunch. Either way, it’s your choice,_ ” Baz grumbled and hung up. 

Many days, it felt like he only ever got up for Baz anymore. But he still wouldn’t tell him how long he’d lain awake, contemplating a sick call, feeling completely sapped out of his will to try. 

He still hadn’t told Baz that he would soon be hopelessly blind.

⚭

That all faded like the morning mist as he and the man had met after the morning class. These were the times when Baz’s presence was enough to remind Chiro that the future would not be as dreadful as it seemed and that life would find a way to help him get by. But then there were others where it just didn’t work that way either.

Sadly, this turned out to be one of them, the discouragement shaped as Baz scrolling furiously down his phone, his lunch half-eaten and then ignored completely. 

Chiro gestured to it. “Are you going to finish that?”

Baz first turned to him with a slightly surprised look, and then followed his inquiry to the path of his food and scowled. “Of course I am,” he said and pointedly picked up his chopsticks for a demonstration. “You’ve used up your free lunch stub, try again on Friday.”

Chiro beamed. “So our friendship does come with a price,” he said—and instantly regretted it. Baz didn’t appear to have noticed but he knew better than to depend completely on the man’s appearances. He had a tendency to remember so much more than Chiro thought, even leaving him reminders in his voice inbox, in a sad bid to be as annoying as Chiro was with his wake up and bedtime calls.

His face fell. He looked slightly embarrassed. Maybe this was just one of those things that could not be fixed by humor. Thankfully, the measure of his friendship did not solely rely on his capability to make jokes. 

He put down his spoon and asked carefully, “How bad is it?”

“Not so bad,” Baz said quickly, shaking his head before there was any cause for Chiro to worry. He squared his shoulders. “This time it’s not so bad. It’s not as bad as the first.”

They spoke in vagueness, but it was clear in their minds what they were speaking of: Baz’s latest headline. Another brush with the triad. They’d never spoken of it explicitly since the first time it came up but it was always there,hovering in the sidelines, a tender punchline in a joke. Chiro was always careful, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. 

Like now. “So they aren’t asking for your head yet?” he jested familiarly. Baz gave him a small smile, which was more than he could hope for. In truth, he never actually knew much about the real situation, more than what he’d Googled at first. He only assumed that maybe there was a debt, some unfinished business and these headlines served as a constant reminder for Baz that he hadn’t quite escaped his fate yet. 

It was easy to conceive these ideas so nonchalantly, but when Chiro began to think seriously about them, he had to worry. 

“It’s a press nightmare. That’s all it is,” Baz said dismissively. He put down his phone and turned it over, face down. “It’s a headache that I’m sick of.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Do? Nothing. You just,” Baz waved a fly over his head, “you just wait for them to forget about it.”

“That’s it?” Chiro frowned. “So you’ll just let it keep coming back to you like a nightmare. Like flu.” He couldn’t imagine it. 

“I say anything about it, it’s only going to blow up in my face.” Baz raised a brow. “The only time this is going to end is if I die.”

“ _Baz._ ”

Baz blinked and furrowed his brows, a little perplexed at Chiro’s tense response. 

In all aspects, it _was_ probably an overreaction. One didn’t need to be as old as he to know how the public worked, how the media liked to play them. How much worth these stories had, how much people loved this stuff—a good Samaritan with a shady past. He couldn’t bare the thought of a dim future without his friend, though. No Baz to watch his class, no Baz to talk with over lunch and coffee. He was already losing his eyes, he didn’t want to lose more than that. But because of that, what Baz had said to him had surpassed the boundaries of common sense. It was tempting fate now. 

He didn’t want to explain all that, of course, and it was inappropriate besides. Baz was an adult, he could look after himself without someone hawking behind his back. He had no excuses for how he felt either. 

He stood up just then, a little abruptly. “Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom.”

“Hey, careful, you nearly hit someone there.”

He couldn’t tell if Baz was joking about that or not. He couldn’t see to be sure. He smiled for what it’s worth and turned, walking fast. 

He didn’t see the young lady coming swiftly from his side. Didn’t see the tray of tea, milk tea and soft drinks she was carrying until he felt cold water splashing down his side. His elbow rang when it hit the tray. The chorus of plastic glasses falling to the floor felt like a siren in his head. 

He froze, looking at the gaping woman, aghast. He didn’t see her coming. He hadn’t seen her coming. His drenched shirt and jeans felt cold against his skin.

It’s happened. He’d caused an accident. 

“Uh…uncle, I’m sorry!”

“I’m sorry,” Chiro hurried to correct her, reaching for the tray of debris she still carried uncertainly. The restaurant felt too quiet for him. She looked like a high school student, intimidated perhaps by his age. The poor thing, it wasn’t her fault. “Are you okay?”

All his efforts to set her at ease were dashed when a chair groaned and whined against the floor and cutlery jumped, like someone had banged their legs too hard on the underside of the table, racing to stand. Chiro looked warily at Baz on his feet, stunned and staring. 

Of course, Baz had seen it all.

⚭

“There’s no need for you to drive me home, I can take the train.”

“You’re crazy if you think you can ride the MTR looking like that. Get in, I’m not going anywhere without you.”

That was how Chiro found himself riding beside his friend, strapped in in spite of his protests (“I’ve got tea all over me, I’m only going to ruin your seat.” “Do you know how to put on a seat belt or do I have to do it myself?”), cruising down roads as if there was a hospital emergency. He felt severely conscious in his wet shirt and pants and somehow, that convinced him that it was much better to watch the city zip past and ignore his gracious driver. Baz didn’t listen to music. His car smelt vaguely of a floral incense and hummed quietly.

A pendant of a bird with wings that met at the tips, forming a full circle, dangled from his rear-view mirror.

⚭

“Make yourself at home. I’ll just change quickly.”

Chiro felt like he was moving in a way that would get him away from his sudden guest as fast as he could. He’d left the door open and the keys in the knob so that Baz had to be the one to close it after him and find his way around the plain apartment room. There was not much to see in it anymore: his kitchen utensils were neatly laid out on the kitchenette’s counter with a striking absence of knives because he didn’t want to hurt himself—and that was all of them. His dining set, round though his table was, had been pushed off to a corner where he would not bang himself against it. As for the living room, all its shelves had already been hollowed out, its contents moved to open boxes beside the couch and the TV set, all pushed up to the wall, leaving a clean space smack dab in the middle.

“So when did you decide to move?” Baz asked conversationally while Chiro was inside his bedroom, changing clothes in a hurry. Mobius was there, crouching under his bed, ears alert, hiding from the rare visitor. He grinned at the poor cat and pressed a finger to his lips. And then he heard the shift of boxes and the clack of plastic frames. In a panic, he stumbled out, neglecting to put on his slippers. 

“Just redecorating,” he spat out. He found Baz sitting on his couch, rummaging through his stuff. Two photo frames had been set aside next to him while another one was pinned in one hand. He couldn’t see it clearly anymore but he knew it was one of the shots he’d taken of Petra, so many years back. 

His guest straightened up, inspecting another picture. “You took these?”

“Most of them,” Chiro admitted, padding quietly in his socks to sit near his friend. Baz bent to pick another frame from the depths of the box between his feet. He saw they were both of Uluru. 

“They look great,” Baz said, sitting back. “You should put them where the morning sun hits first.”

Chiro shrugged. “Too bad I don’t have many windows.” A heartbeat later, he confessed quietly, “Actually, I’m packing them away.”

Baz put down the pictures. He turned to Chiro with his brows curled again. “How come?” he asked. “These are good pictures,” he said again, even showing him one to prove his point. 

Chiro smiled, all teeth. “If you want them so much, keep them. I don’t mind.” It was a sudden decision but a surprisingly easy one. He really didn’t mind. It was a better prospect than leaving them in a locker storage and forgetting all about them. Maybe forever. Besides, what would Baz do with them, sell them to scammers? 

Baz considered his offer. Bending a little, he sorted through the many framed memories stacked neatly in the box. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

He straightened up again and looked at Uluru, then Petra. 

“Well then,” showing both pictures to their photographer, Baz said, “Don’t mind if I do.”

⚭

Baz picked five, then a dozen.

He went home that day with boxes full of photographs and books.

That night, Chiro explored his barren apartment with his cat weaving around his legs, feeling its emptiness. Not for the first and the last time, he observed that this was going to be his future. Hollow. Nothing to see.

“Well, Mobius, this is it,” he told the cat quietly, running his big toe down his spine. “Our future. Just you and me and an empty house.”

⚭

The next evening, Baz called.

“ _Are you busy?_ ” he asked, voice rough.

That put Chiro on his toes in an instant, the hairs at the back of his neck rising. In the silence of his living room, Baz may as well have echoed. “I’m not,” he answered instantly. He was studying braille, one of those DIY kits he found on a bargain. “Baz, what’s wrong?”

“ _Can you come out? Can we go out?_ ”

“Can you come and pick me up?”

He could. Ten minutes. Chiro started to get dressed.

He could not explain the relief that washed over him when he saw his friend again behind the steering wheel. Maybe he looked different. Hollow-eyed, pale-faced but in the dark and with his eyes, Chiro couldn’t see properly. And he refused to let his imaginations take control of him, not when hysteria would only be the likely cause so he decided to take faith, and believe only what he saw: Baz looked fine. And that was that.

“You hungry? Thirsty?”

“I’m fine.”

Baz didn’t argue.

They drove in silence, weaving in and out of major traffic, no aim in sight except to drive and keep driving. Eventually, Baz pulled up at Nathan Road. They got off and started to walk. 

Still no end in sight. Overhead, the giant neon lights blazed in the darkness and Jordan Road’s weekend crowd swallowed them whole. Chiro began to panic. He hadn’t been out here this late since his last visit with the doctor. His eyes couldn’t adjust, he couldn’t cope. 

When he started to lose Baz, he called him, half-frightened. Baz stopped and waited for him to catch up, then walked on. 

They went up and down sidewalks, narrow streets, crossing with the masses and then peeling away. Chiro watched his friend walking next to him when he could, saw his chin raised and his shoulders squared, his hands tucked in his camel coat as if he hadn’t just ordered an impromptu excursion for his own sanity. Baz tried to match his pace but whatever was driving him around the city late in the evening, it often propelled him forward and left Chiro lagging. He would call his name again and Baz would stop and wait. Then they would walk again. 

They must have been at it for an hour. Just walking, looking, listening. Baz didn’t speak and neither did Chiro. He knew the man had always been the quiet sort, he observed that he preferred to listen when there was no need to talk. 

He made a decision to wait for his cue. Then he would talk. 

They stopped by a McDonald’s for a hamburger break then proceeded to walk again. Not long after, Baz stopped to brace his weight against a sidewalk barrier, bending low to get comfortable. Chiro imitated him. It was by no means an empty road. Pedestrians and vehicles passed them front and back, splashed with lights. But they were left alone—and that was good enough. 

“You know, I should have apologized for yesterday,” Baz began all of a sudden, scanning the moving traffic. “You wouldn’t have reacted that way if it hadn’t been for what I’d said.”

At any other time, Chiro might have made a quip. This time, he understood that Baz wasn’t looking for a conversation. He needed a companion, an ear to listen to him. He needed to talk, without anyone stopping him. 

“It’s not that I don’t care about the headline, I _do_ want to do something about it.” Baz turned to face him. “But I can’t. It’s not just the media, you see. Even if I escape them, I’ll never be able to escape the triad. They won’t let me.”

So was he right all along? Baz had a debt? 

Baz shifted closer to him. “You know I grew up in a poor family. We lived in a caged home once.” His voice was low. “And when I was young, all I could think about was getting rich. So that my parents and I don’t have to keep starving and we don’t have to keep moving because we kept being sent away. Because we couldn’t pay, because we had no money.”

Chiro never realized that Baz had started that way. He’d only assumed that the man had the means right from the start. 

“And now. Finally, I’m here. But I can’t stop,” he hissed, muttered. “I can’t stop. And it isn’t because I’ve become a prisoner of my own vocation, it’s not that.” Baz shook his head. “But it’s like something’s missing. See, when I was starting out, I thought that when I’ve brought us out of poverty, my life will be complete. But it wasn’t enough. So I looked for others. I looked for the poor, the hungry, the sick, the homeless…the ones like me and my parents…” 

It was like the admission of his secret had drained him. He hid his eyes behind his hand, and it carried the weight of his burden, his weariness. “Not enough,” Baz sighed. “Still not enough. It’s almost like,” he crossed his arms on the barrier and looked out to the rolling cars, “I’m looking for one thing, or one person. One _kind_ of thing or person. It’s like a debt I owe that hurts me because I don’t know how to pay it. And all this,” he waved his hand around, “is just meaningless exercise. A preparation gone too long. A distraction, a sorry excuse to convince myself I’m doing something.” 

But he shook his head, and like a dagger, he jabbed himself in the middle of his chest with his fingers. “Still hollow. And I don’t even know if that person, that thing exists. I don’t know what I’m looking for, Chiro,” he turned to face his friend again. “But I can’t stop. That’s why I can’t stop.”

He’d never heard Baz sound so lost. Desperate. He couldn’t say he knew what it felt like, to be looking for something you don’t even know, but he could sympathize that it was difficult. Frustrating. He wondered if that would be his life once his eyes had gone. At least he and Baz could be in the same boat, then. And Baz would no longer have to be alone, even if he couldn’t fill the gap. 

“So the triad…” Chiro began slowly. This was the first time he was going to speak of it again in the entire history of their relationship. “Did you…”

“I needed money to start out,” Baz answered. “Bad decisions made on bad days. I’d found a loan shark. It was tough but I managed to pay everything plus the interest a few years later. Now they’re just harassing me, because they know I won’t fight back. I’d let them bully me all this time but all I can think about is surviving and keeping my skin attached to my back so I pulled through. All for that one person I’m looking for. That one thing.”

How was it like to make all these sacrifices for someone, some _thing_ that didn’t exist outside of your gut? Were they even real? It was an amazing show of faith, to have lived all his life for a purpose that felt so temporary, but it was also desperate. 

And if he never found them? If their non-existence was proven, what would happen? He didn’t want to see Baz come crashing down, burning like a falling star. He wouldn’t be able to live through that, and it would break Chiro, too. He didn’t realize how much he’d come to rely on Baz’s constance to see him through his own challenges. He had to keep him strong, he wanted him to be strong for himself. 

Could he be that person he was looking for? It was a funny thought but not unreasonable. If that person didn’t exist, they could create it for Baz. It could be him. 

How to put it? Bolstered by this, he reached slowly for Baz’s closest hand. He wanted to hold it, to tell him that his search was over. It was him. It could be him. 

_Could_ be. And if it wasn’t him? If that person, that thing existed somewhere in the galaxy, could he truly replace them? He wouldn’t have the heart. Didn’t. 

He would help him look—for Baz’s sake as much as his own. He pulled back at the last minute and laid his hand onto his friend’s shoulder. A safe gesture. Baz didn’t look but he responded with his own hand and gripped him firmly. His hand was warm. 

They returned to silent companionship.

⚭

“Ah, I remember where I parked it! This way, I know a shortcut.”

The silence this time was full, but not heavy. The city had thinned out and many of the lights that used to glow had now been doused. Chiro felt relieved. He could follow Baz more easily now. 

Even being a pace or two behind him, he didn’t worry. The man constantly called to him to walk this way, turn there, and he followed obediently. Easily. He was a tourist in his own city again, hands deep within his gray cardigan. “I’ll be right behind you,” he assured him, smiling. 

And then he wasn’t. He’d turned once, and met an endless, empty road ahead of him with no Baz in sight. 

Panic felt like a cold bucket of water running down his spine, his chest and his belly, as he stared out at the darkness of an unfamiliar street, with unfamiliar cars and unfamiliar signs. “Baz?” he called out but no one came hurrying to pick him up and lead him right. 

He looked back the way he came, took the corner, but couldn’t recognize the lighted road he came upon. He turned to the opposite way but could only make out the dark shapes of late night strangers. 

He’d turned the wrong way. That was the only possibility. Years of practicing Tai Chi had helped him recover the rhythm of his breath and he started to think properly. No matter. This was his city. He couldn’t be lost in it. 

He turned again to the dark street and started walking to the next corner. The sound of traffic growled past at the other end and that encouraged him. He moved carefully, keeping his eyes down to his feet, watching his steps. He wished he had a stick to help him scan the ground before he had to put his foot forward. 

And then he didn’t. A bright yellow light splashed across the asphalt and he could see better. He sighed in relief—and then it became too much. He shut his eyes, but the blare of a horn forced him to look. 

He whirled to see the speeding headlights. They flashed and blinded. He twisted away, raising his hands to protect himself. The car screeched. 

And then it hit him. It crashed to his side and he flew. The splash of gravel, the smell of burning air. He tasted it in his mouth, and his blood. He heard shouting, screaming. Voices fading…

⚭

When he came to, Baz was shaking him and calling his name. He started with a gasp and lashed out a hand to grab his sleeve. Chiro stared up at him with wild eyes.

“Are you okay?” Baz repeated, hoarse. “Chiro, are you okay?!”

The night was dark and quiet. The air smelled of the brisk weather, sharp and clean. He flicked his tongue across his lips and tasted nothing. He could move in spite of the bulk draped over him. 

“You almost got run over by a car,” Baz sighed heavily. He heard the weariness, the weight in his breath. And the tears. “Chiro, are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” he croaked, raising a hand to wipe Baz’s cheek dry. He noticed then that the man was lifting him off the cold ground, and it was his mass that was laid on top of him. He felt warm in the embrace. “I’m okay,” he reassured him.

Baz smiled, almost to the point of laughing, and he grinned back.

⚭

Baz had saved him. He’d jumped out of the corner from the back and shoved him down while the car skidded off and missed. Chiro had fainted for a few minutes.

He’d come so close to death because of his eyes. For one critical second, his life had been completely in the hands of Baz. If he’d been just one second slower, if he hadn’t been there at the right time…

As soon as the numbness and the initial shock had worn off, he started to shiver uncontrollably. In his mind’s eye, lights flashed like the torture of a nightmare even as he stared at his feet, at the dark. He hadn’t even noticed it when Baz draped his coat over his shoulders and led him to the car by the hand, speaking softly and always calling him by his name. 

His voice. That was his tether. His only anchor to the present.

They drove smoothly down empty roads, the world a quiet place. Chiro spaced out, staring out the window but the passing street lamps, waxing and waning when they came, tormented him. He jumped at every flash of the lighted sentinels, until it became too much he had to close his eyes. In the darkness, he wished them all away.

Baz held him, and he poured all his senses to that comforting wrap of his hand. _I’m here,_ he heard his voice say in his mind. _I’m here._

⚭

“Keep the lights out,” he said. “I don’t want them.”

He left Baz to shut the door behind them while he dragged himself to the couch like a zombie, counting his steps just as he always had with his eyes closed. He sat down, moving slowly; his entire body felt bruised all over from having been thrown off and landing roughly.

“Do you want some water?” Baz asked from the kitchenette. “Tea?”

Chiro shook his head. He didn’t sound it out. He stared out at the shadows, at the vague shape of his TV set, his empty shelves, the boxes between them. He stared at the phantoms of his photo frames where they’d used to surround him. His old life.

He felt the couch sinking carefully beside him, felt Baz’s body heat. He turned over his hand expectantly between them and it was taken and held. He wrapped his fingers around the other man’s in return. Grateful. 

“Do you have to go? Can you stay the night?” he asked, seeing nothing. “The truth is that I’m slowly going blind. And I don’t trust myself to be alone tonight.”

Now it was his turn to speak without want of a response. 

“The doctor gave me six months. Now it’s just three. Or two. Or less,” he rambled on. “If I hadn’t been half-blind, I would have seen the car coming, I would have known where you’d turned. But this is my life now.” He closed his eyes. “There might come a time when I won’t be so lucky anymore.”

⚭

He didn’t remember how he made it to bed. Baz must have helped him. He’d fallen asleep in last night’s clothes.

He heard the sound of plastic rustling before he woke up. Mobius made a meow from the kitchen, and a man answered him, “These aren’t for you. Are you even allowed leftovers?”

“Baz?” Chiro asked, staring at the ceiling. He couldn’t help but notice how little he saw of it now.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Baz called back. “Your cat is here, being a bother. Hey no, not yours.” Mobius issued a meow of complaint.

Chiro’s face split open with a toothy smile.

“Stay where you are. I’ll come and get you. No, Cat! Get…!”

He tracked Baz’s progress by the sound of paper boxes hitting the table, bowls and other cutlery, Mobius mewling and once, his panicked yelp and his cat’s victorious cry. Chiro laughed.

Baz arrived after five minutes, inviting him up with a, “Come,” and two hands out. “Careful,” he reminded him.

“I’m only half-blind, Baz. I can still see,” Chiro replied but the man’s concern touched him, and he couldn’t keep himself from smiling as he took his hands and let the man pull him up.

He’d bought dim sum for breakfast, from the Wellcome mart nearby. Baz was also still dressed in last night’s clothes but somehow, Chiro thought he looked much fresher than he had any right to be, after putting his neck in the line for someone else’s.

“I thought about making breakfast but then I noticed one thing,” Baz began as soon as they’d sat down and started to eat.

Chiro ate with pleasure, and in silence, waiting for the observation.

“You don’t have any knives.”

“What’s a blind man need knives for?” he asked cheerfully.

“To cut things with! Or you could use it against burglars.”

“I have a cat for that.”

“Your cat will be turned to char siu bao before he can bite them,” Baz groaned, shaking his head. “I’ve got a better idea. Come live with me.”

Down went the siumai that was once nestled comfortably between Chiro’s chopsticks, tumbling down the table, rolling down his pants, down to his foot where Mobius was ready to pounce on it. He ran away with his treasure. Neither man knew if cats were allowed to eat siumai but neither of them could be bothered to check just now.

“Say what again?” he pursued, cautiously.

“Move in with me,” Baz said, and he looked serious. Straight in his eyes. “I’ve thought about it.” And he started ticking off his reasons with his fingers, “You’re almost blind, you live alone, and you don’t even have knives.” He leaned back against his seat, crossing his arms. “I have a chef that comes in every day and I hire an agency to keep my house clean.”

“Where do you live, Macau? In a casino?” Chiro stared at him. “Or is that your house in Disneyland? Is that where you keep all your mistresses?” It was a subtle jab on his now-confirmed gang connections.

Baz raised a brow. “I live in Ocean Park,” he said nonchalantly.

Chiro’s laughter burst out in a painful spurt through his nose before it opened up to a full-blown glee. He fell back to his own chair, curling at the pain on his side from where he’d landed last night, but damn if he stopped laughing just for that. “No shit?” he gasped after, sighing, in tears.

“No shit. Dolphins keep the burglars away from my house.”

Chiro laughed again but by now, he was too sapped from the first quip to keep it going for long. So then he sat like a melted puddle, catching his breath with blissful sighs. “Ah, it feels good to laugh, doesn’t it?” He chuckled. He turned his head ever so slightly to his friend who began to eat again. “Why should I live with you?”

“Are you deaf? I thought you were just blind.” Baz slurped in a mouthful of golden jellyfish.

“No, _why_ should I live with you?” Chiro straightened up, looking closely at his chewing friend. “Why invite me? You don’t have to do this.” He didn’t have to.

But Baz did. And he thought there was a sadness in his eyes, a pensive look about him, when he’d put down his bowl and chopsticks to mull the question. “Because,” he began, “what happened last night,” he looked at Chiro, “was the scariest thing that ever happened in my life. And I don’t want it to happen again, not if I can help it. You can’t imagine…what I was thinking. When you wouldn’t answer me.”

He remembered the tears in his voice, his damp cheek. He remembered his warm hand and his comforting weight. _I’m here,_ he’d said. _I’m here._

“Come live with me,” Baz repeated softly. “Please,” he added.

It was not a terrible proposal. In fact, there was nothing bad in it at all. He would have someone to keep an eye on him, he would have company other than his cat. He would have dolphins instead of empty walls, warm, home-cooked meals instead of store-bought ones he’d have to heat in the microwave.

He would have Baz.

It was not a terrible idea at all.

“Fine,” Chiro said, nodding. “I’ll come live with you.” Joy mixed with relief in Baz’s face. “But on three conditions.”

“What is this now?” Baz spat all of a sudden, brows frowning.

Chiro began to list them, fingers out, “One, you’ll help me find a place to donate, or sell, all my stuff to. Two, my cat comes with us.”

“Well, fine, I can live with that.”

“Three,” and here, Chiro smiled slyly, “you’ll have to beat me.”

Baz’s brow scaled the tallest building in Hong Kong. “Beat you where now?”

⚭

“Tekken?!”

“Come on! When was the last time you relived your childhood?” Chiro laughed, giddy as a boy. It had been ages since the epic opening music had spilled out of his TV set as a cast of fighters enjoyed rapid fire screen times in successive location changes. He sat on the floor next to his friend, legs crossed and back comfortably slouched. “I stopped playing after my eyes started getting bad because I thought it would help. This is the first time I’d brought this thing out of the box since. Have you ever played?”

“A little but as a child, I never had my own,” Baz shared, watching the graphics move. “By the time I could afford it, I wasn’t all that interested anymore. So what’s the catch?”

“Don’t worry, it’s simple.” Chiro grinned. “Best of five. Beat me three times and you get to take me home.”

“I didn’t mean to put it that way.”

“You’d do it anyway, wouldn’t you?” Chiro asked, winking. 

Baz smirked. Facing the TV set, he said, “All right. Let’s do this!”

⚭

Baz’s mansion in Deep Water Bay was much larger than Chiro had ever managed to imagine. Cream walls, modern furnishing, a play on white and gray and polished wooden surfaces. The living room alone had as much surface area as his whole flat, overlooking a pool with a small garden and a pavilion, such that he’d only ever seen in movies.

“Where are the dolphins?” he asked. 

“Off duty.” Baz grunted as the last of his belongings met the floor. “They’ll come in tomorrow.”

No servants, no one fussing over them. Chiro understood that this was how Baz liked it. To have the house all to his own, filled only with his thoughts. 

Well, he belonged to it now. 

“So what do you think, hm?” he asked his cat exploring the area of the fluffy carpet under the squat glass table. “It’s not so bad for your new playground, is it?” The door shut with an echo. 

He heard Baz coming in and whirled to meet him. “So?” the man grunted, stretching his back. Chiro’s things had fit in four luggages and he’d been the one to carry them all in by his insistence. “What do you think? Do you like it?”

Chiro coughed out a laugh. “Do I have a choice?” He started back towards his new housemate from the living room, to the rhythm of his walking stick tapping against the floor. It was a gift from Baz, a simple thing made out of burnt oak that Baz thought he ought to get used to while he could still see. “You ask me as if this is a gift to me and I’m your new wife.”

“Well, do you like it or not, anyway?” Baz shrugged. “If you don’t like it, you can go and join the other mistresses in Disneyland.”

“ _Other_ mistresses?” He grinned. Looking up to the high ceiling, he asked, “So I’m to be the only mistress here?”

“You’re the first, at least, if that bothers you so much.” Then Baz snorted. “Why are we even talking about my houses like this?”

“So you _do_ have other houses!” Chiro cackled triumphantly, now standing close to his friend and his circle of luggages. “Maybe I’ll ask for a tour,” he said, bending low to reach for one of his luggages, “just to show off that I’m your newest favorite.”

“Are you making me regret my decision?”

“Depends if you would abide by my most important rule of all.”

Baz popped another brow.

Chiro took that as his cue. “ _If_ I’m going to be one of your mistresses,” he stood up with the luggage, bringing his face close to the owl-eyed master of the house. “I want to be _the_ mistress,” he warned him softly.

Then broke out in a manic grin. He couldn’t help it! He didn’t remember how long it had been since he was playful, and it felt so good to be it now. To throw caution in the air, after years and months of being nothing but cautious because of his eyes. Baz looked flustered which only made him want to laugh but he moved on. Quickly. “Show me to my room.”

Baz had waited until he’d taken one step up the black stylish, twisting stairwell at the side before he said, “No, I’ll show you something else.” Chiro turned in time to see him waving him over as he moved deeper into the house. “Come on, I’ll show you to the Red Room.”

“The _Red Room_?” Chiro laughed. “You mean like in _50 Shades_? If you’re that kind of person, you better give me a warning so I can start running.” He followed him anyway, leaving his luggage at the foot of the stairs. 

“As if you’d get far,” Baz snorted, turning to him over his shoulder. “You watched that?”

“I was dating someone and she was a fan. It didn’t work out between us.”

“Hard to see why,” Baz commented blandly. “Here.”

 _Here_ was a door that stood out among its counterparts for being painted red, a tasteful burgundy shade unlike the one in Chiro’s tacky imagination. But he still snorted painfully, biting down his grin while Baz produced the key to the unlock the room. 

He opened the door and held it for his permanent guest. “After you.”

“If you grab me from the back, I will cane you,” Chiro warned him, waving his walking stick at Baz’s dead-eyed expression even as he accepted the invitation. He didn’t know what he expected coming in, but it was definitely not cream walls, sunlight and an open-backed settee in the middle that was black. Not red. 

He saw the picture frames all around him last. And there, he stopped in recognition. Of Petra. Wadi Rum. Uluru. Giza.

And others he’d only dreamed of visiting in the past. The Atacama Desert, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, the Namib Desert. There were so many of them, so much sun and sand and rocks that put together, they could almost paint the walls red. 

“Baz…” It was all he could say, too stunned for something cleverer as he looked around the private gallery. It was like his old flat, but so much more. Here and there, he saw pictures of a younger Baz, standing before great monuments of nature. And here and there, he saw pictures of _him_. The ones he’d taken during his days of traveling, surrounded himself with and eventually packed up in boxes. And later gave away to his friend with no hopes of ever seeing them again. “You…”

“I told you, they were great pictures.” Baz finally came in, hands behind his back. “Shame to throw them all away just because you won’t be able to see them soon. This one’s my favorite.” He walked over to one side of the room, finger out to point. It landed on a picture of Chiro during a sunset in Wadi Rum. In that magical hour, the golden orb had fit in nicely between his fingers.

Chiro guffawed, doubling over. “Do you know how many takes it took to get that shot?” He was beaming now. “Twelve tries! I remember it clearly. I was very insistent on it.”

“It turned out great,” Baz repeated, arms crossed. “I’m glad I saved it from you.”

“Me, too.” His honesty surprised him. There was so much more to see, so much stories to be found within the confines of cheap frames. So many of them he wanted to ask Baz right then and there. 

Most of them, he found at the back of the room. Temple-like structures built atop mountains, surrounded by refreshing green space. “Tibetan monasteries,” Baz answered his unspoken question, approaching from the back. “I went on a world tour once.” He pointed at some of them. “Lhasa. Bhutan. Burma.”

“Did you find enlightenment?” Chiro asked casually, peering closely at the last one. When Baz didn’t answer, he looked over his shoulder, and found the sad smile dancing on his face. He knew then what he’d been looking for. 

“You’ve been to so many places,” he observed instead, looking at others. He found another one of Baz in Uluru and just next to it, himself in the same place with a similar look about him. 

Just then, it occurred to him. Touching his picture, he realized now what this red room was trying to tell him. “Baz,” Chiro began softly. “We could have met. We could have met much sooner.”

“I thought about that, too,” he said. 

It was sad. They could have met much sooner but instead, they’d spent all that time as strangers. How many years had passed before they met in the hospital? 

Perhaps a different person might have mourned this missed opportunity. All that lost time where they could have been together—but Chiro saw something else. Turning back to Baz, he flashed him a happy smile. “We really _are_ birds of a feather!” he said. It was practically the best discovery he’d made that day. Smiling back, Baz nodded.

⚭

Shortly after he’d moved in, he left his job. In the past, he didn’t think it would have been an easy decision to make but he had someone to watch his back now. So there was no reason to hesitate about it anymore.

Since then, he felt like he was in a permanent vacation of sorts. Living with a rich man left him with no chores to do and all the time in the world for whatever he wanted. His first few days had been spent feeling the house, lazing around, sitting in the Red Room, playing with his cat or napping like one until Baz came home from whatever businesses needed his attention and he had someone to chat with. He learned then that his other houses were another source of income, rented out to films and Airbnb, to families at a low cost, and not to wives as they had earlier joked about.

Little by little, his days regained some form of structure. He picked up his braille again, he started to swim. He followed his old work schedule to keep up with his Tai Chi which made it easy for Baz to catch him as he used to. Sometimes, they walked around the neighborhood as they chatted. 

Days passed in a blur. Chiro saw even less. He did whatever he could do with them to make up for the time that would be lost in the future. He asked Baz to take him sightseeing, he watched movies and games and other shows when he could. He read the papers, books and copied down the quotes that he liked by hand. Sometimes he cooked. Most nights, he stayed up late, watching replays TV. 

“Don’t sit too close, you’ll ruin your eyes.”

Chiro grinned at Baz’s gentle warning but stayed at the foot his queen-sized bed. “Tried that. Didn’t work.” If he moved any further, that colorful curry dish bubbling on screen might look like an entirely different thing altogether, no matter if the TV was 32-inches or whatever the actual size was. Baz was watching him watch from his door, leaning comfortably against the frame. 

He didn’t stop the man when he moved in and turned off the TV. “That’s boring,” Baz said and lent his hands to the smiling man. “Get dressed. Let’s get out of here.”

“Where are we going?” Chiro asked, laying his hands on Baz’s open palms. 

“Where do you want to go?”

“Everywhere,” he said. “You lead. I’ll follow.”

⚭

It was a much too different night time excursion than the first one when Baz laid out his heart and Chiro almost died. This time, they parked the car near Central Station where it was easy to lose themselves in the crowd and the bright lights. They talked about nothing in particular and everything they could think about. They dropped by a grocery store because Baz remembered he needed shampoo and came away with a bag of chips they passed between themselves as they walked. Later on, they washed it down with coffee from some b-grade cafe, then Chiro bought an eggette because the store smelt very good. And because he could.

He felt so free, then. Free from caution, free from worries, free from dark thoughts. He went wherever he wanted to go and Baz followed, without exception or a question asked. He felt no fear. 

They stopped at the Central Elevated Walkway near the IFC Mall, the last stop for the night before they went home. Chiro was tired, but he wanted one last souvenir to remember the trip by. 

He braced his weight against the barrier and peered out towards the lights across the bay, a chilly wind blowing softly. Victoria Harbour looked radiant as it always did with a million tiny stars drawing the shape of its proud skyscrapers and the ferries coming in and out of port. It sparkled unapologetically among its neighbors. 

“I’m gonna miss this place,” Chiro sighed, trying to take in the expanse, drink it all in. “This could be my last memory of Victoria Harbour. Can you believe that?”

Baz didn’t answer him. He stood a little apart from the near-blind man but this, to take in a different sight, a different souvenir. One that came in the form of a man in a black leather jacket, leaning towards the bay with bliss in his mind. He had the ghost of a smile playing in his lips, a man truly at peace with himself. 

“Hey Chiro,” Baz called to him. “Look here.”

Chiro turned towards his friend and flashed him a happy smile. He defined contentment at that hour. 

Baz started towards him, sure as a man can be. Chiro straightened up, but only so he could take the man’s face and guide him towards his waiting lips. They met in a flurry of warmth and relief. Soft. Sweet. A distinct knowledge that all was as it should be. The blissful surrender of one’s defenses, finally. Baz’s mouth tasted like victory after a long race. Heady like wine, but as slaking as cool water. He could never get enough of it. 

That night, a man made love to him for the first time in his whole life. It couldn’t be more perfect than anything he could dream of.

⚭

He saw clearly, in a way that could only come from the morning glow of sex.

From Baz’s bedroom window, Deep Water Bay was spread out all around him, asleep. Quiet. Lazy, basking in the early sun. It had a sort of delicate, untouchable quality to it, the temporary paradise of a world unmarred by realistic expectations. It was picturesque. The breeze bit lightly on his bare flesh covered in last night’s sweat and passion. At once, he felt both sore and powerful. 

He heard the bed stir, he listened to the sheets ruffle. Baz padded quietly to join him in his observation. “It’s beautiful,” he said, as the man wrapped his arms around him from the back and pressed a kiss first on his cheek, and then the crook of his neck. He felt his soft belly pushing behind him. Chiro never thought he could have such a desire for it, coming awake so soon after the contact. He felt those fingers tracing the muscles along his abdomen. He wanted Baz to kiss them again, the way he did on his way down between his legs. 

“I’m so glad I met you,” he went on. His hands hung onto Baz’s wrists while those wanting lips tasted his shoulder, his hair, the back of his neck. “Now I’ve got access to this sight through your window.”

“Just for that?” Baz asked, even as he reached down to test his girth. 

“ _Purely_ just for that,” he groaned, even as he melted against the man’s shoulders, sighing happily as he was stroked. Baz was a few inches taller than himself. Somehow, even that minuscule detail meant the world to him. He turned to face him and parted his lips, asking for a kiss. 

Baz gave it to him, tender and patient, but so full. The great thing about their age, he realized then, was that they’d gone past the stage of proving their devotion for each other. Of being impatient, desperate. Pretending just to overcompensate. Stripped of so much drama, all it left them was the joy of love, and each other. 

They parted after a long meeting. Chiro rested his forehead against his lover’s, nose to nose with the only man, the only person in this world he had ever come to want and need. “Tell me you’re staying,” he whispered, begging him. 

His eyes closed, Baz shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere,” he purred. 

“Good,” Chiro said, looking up to him so closely and grinning. “Me neither.”

⚭

Baz had such an appetite for sex, which was not what he knew of the man whose wife divorced him—contrary to what the papers reported—for being unable to perform his duties as a husband. But what surprised him more was how much he craved the same affection, how a single touch might drive him wild if there was ever a chance it could lead to _there_. He’d never been so sex-crazed in his previous relationships. He’d lain with his girlfriends when they’d asked it of him, but he never left the door to the shower room open just so he could pull them in. He couldn’t say that it was uncontrollable lust, though. It felt more like two men trying to make up for lost time.

They learned about each other more deeply between sheets and each other’s legs. Baz liked it when he cried his name and when he told him where he wanted to be touched, where he wanted to be kissed. He liked it when Baz pinned him down with his weight, when Baz subdued him but he was always so careful. So gentle. It intoxicated him, the goodness of this man. He often felt like a child nagging for attention, and he never felt guilty when it came packaged in small kisses and sweet caresses. He liked to play games with Baz—his honest, genuinely good Baz.

His eyes stayed shut even as he heard Baz come into his room quietly, pretending to still be asleep just because he had nothing better to do that day than to be lazy. He was on his side, back to the visitor. Baz came close enough to brush his hair lightly with his fingers as he bent down to kiss his cheek and then his bare shoulder. And then he couldn’t take it anymore. 

He had to wake up, he had to see Baz before he left. He turned, reaching for his wrist. He smiled drowsily when the man, already dressed in a respectable blazer, looked back and returned to his bedside with his own soft smile. “Have a good day in the office, honey,” he mumbled daintily. He waited for a kiss on the lips. 

He got a kiss from a letter that smacked him on the nose. “What!” he laughed, rising slowly. “You just hit a blind man.”

“You’re not yet blind,” Baz grumbled, handing him the laminated envelope. “I just got back. Here, this is yours.”

“Is this my bill now?” Chiro sighed as he deposited his head on Baz’s lap, wriggling and kicking until he was comfortable with his new pillow. He opened the envelope and pulled out the thick folded letter and the brochure it came with. “If I sell my eyes to the black market, how much do you think they’ll fetch me?”

“Not much since they’re way past their warranty.”

“You’re horrible, Baz,” Chiro chuckled. He started to read the first page of the letter, which was an email coming from an airline that contained the departure and arrival times of two adults from Hong Kong to Salt Lake City. The details were found in the other pages: extra baggage spaces, miles, rewards, all the little things that Chiro no longer needed to think about. Their hotel accommodations were found in the brochure with a picture of the sandstone buttes of Monument Valley in the back. Another folded letter, a printed e-mail, was found inside, with their booking information among many others.

“Oh Baz,” he said, going back through all the pages scattered around him now. “We leave tomorrow afternoon.”

“So pack light,” Baz advised him, fingers raking Chiro’s hair idly. “Just enough for maybe a week. We’ll buy the other stuff there when we arrive. I didn’t know how long you wanted to stay so I only booked us one-way tickets.” He shrugged. “What’s important to me is that we see it together. This time. And that you see it before your eyes go.”

“You’re making me cry,” Chiro sighed. He tossed the letters aside where they wouldn’t bother him while he reached up to bring Baz down to kiss him. “It’s a shame we have to start packing. I would’ve wanted to show you how much this means to me.”

Baz silenced him with a chaste kiss. “Then we better get started now.”

⚭

It was just as he expected it—and so much more. The sandstone monuments were much bigger than anything the pictures online had prepared him for. And he stood atop one of these curious sentinels to gaze at all the others around him: mesas, pillars, cliffs, ravines. In the dying sunlight of the afternoon, through his ruined eyes, they resembled an ancient city, long gone and forgotten by time. He felt awestruck and grateful.

He felt like he’d been waiting for this moment for so long, and now it was here. And it was beautiful—like all the other places he’d been to. Jordan, Egypt, Australia. 

“You’ve got dirt in your eye.”

“You don’t know how long I’ve been telling myself that!” Chiro laughed, taking the handkerchief from Baz to dry his eyes on. He sniffled, even as he smiled. “The last time I cried, I was in Wadi Rum. I told myself that I was excited. It was an achievement.”

“And now?”

And now, he didn’t know. But he was just glad he was there. Relieved. It felt right. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked Baz, turning to face him, away from the valley. Sunlight spilled down the man in slanting beams, like they belonged to him. He loved him, Chiro realized that now more than ever. He loved him more than his life could comprehend. 

“Kiss me?” he asked. Nothing better could seal this moment in his memories. 

Baz approached him, holding him lightly at the back of his neck while he opened his lips and received him in fullness. In the days to come, that was what he would remember more: his warm skin, his tongue in his mouth, his breath, the smell of his skin. Maybe one day, he would forget what the monuments looked like. Maybe one day, Baz’s face will come to him only in a blur.

But he would always remember that kiss. That one moment where he felt like after a long search, he’d finally made it home.

⚭

They stayed out for as long as their private tour allowed them, taking pictures, mostly for Baz’s sake. After dinner, they returned to their cabin and made love. It was just one of those nights that went on forever, where every kiss, every touch would only be the first of so many. _So many._

When Chiro woke up, he saw Baz clearly. Like a miracle. He was young, so much younger than he’d ever seen him. His skin was darker, and he looked strong. Fit. A young man at his prime. 

They laid under a canvas of sorts that filtered out the morning sun. He could smell incense and fresh wood. Baz was asleep. He called him by a different name, slightly different from the one he knew. 

When he wouldn’t stir, he scuttled closer and pulled down the warm blanket that shrouded their nakedness. He traced the soft lines his muscles had drawn on his chest, his flat belly. He knew all those muscles by their names and could recite them in his sleep. He brushed the dark mat of hair between his legs, and then he cupped him. His fingers folded delicately around the shape of his manhood and began to stroke. He knew a million ways to get a man going by one touch alone. 

But he didn’t have to try so many. He felt the man stir within his hand. 

He saw those beautiful dark eyes open for him. With a wicked glint, Baz smiled at him.

⚭

When he woke up, he saw nothing.

He blinked once. Twice. He rubbed his eyes and raised his hand where he could see it, but saw nothing. And then he knew. He knew. 

Panic came in right on cue, but it was feeble and weak. It set his heart racing, rousing him completely from sleep but he closed his eyes, and breathed. This was a long time coming. He should be prepared for this. He _was_ prepared for this. 

His hand searched his side for another. “Baz?” he asked, staring upwards. “Baz, where are you?” He felt the bed jump all of a sudden. “Baz—”

“I’m here!” That baritone he loved to listen to, if only it said more. “I’m here.” His warm hands wrapped themselves around his reaching one, and he felt the eager kiss on his fingers. “What’s wrong, Chiro? What is it?”

“Where are you, Baz?” he asked calmly, turning towards his voice. And then, finally: “I can’t see you.”

“Can’t—?” It didn’t take long for him to catch on. “No,” he gasped. The bed moved as if he was getting on his knees. “No, no, no! Chiro, you can’t…can you…!”

“Five fingers? I don’t know.” Typical of him, he smiled at his own joke. “Don’t ask me questions I don’t know the answer to, I’m only guessing here.”

“Chiro…!” He couldn’t tell if Baz was devastated or frustrated at him for downplaying this tragedy. He felt a wet, urgent kiss on his forehead and then Baz’s collarbone on his nose when the man hugged him tightly. He smelled them both on his skin and tried to kiss it but Baz broke contact immediately.

“Stay here. I’ll look for someone who can help!”

“Where am I going? I’m blind!” Chiro wanted to laugh so bad. “Baz, can you just…” He reached for him, grasping the air. Somehow, all that flailing had found him a finger, and then a wrist which he grabbed with his other hand.

“Baz, I’m blind,” he reminded him gently, smiling in the midst of this emergency. “Don’t leave a blind man alone, Baz. Just stay here with me. Okay? Don’t go running off where I can’t see you.” Which was everywhere.

Which was, anyway, his point. He needed him by his side, and he should only be by his side. Especially at this trying time—assuming it was still a trying time.

It didn’t take much for Baz to come back to his side. He guided him as best he could at first, but soon the bed was sinking and he was being pulled into a pair of arms and a waiting chest. This time, he kissed it, just as the man held him closer still, until they were length to length. He heard him sniffling. His poor man.

“It’s okay,” he whispered softly to him, reaching back to embrace him. “It’s okay.”

⚭

“What are you looking at?”

They stood atop a bridge, overlooking the river flowing under his feet. The wind was sharp where it blew his face, but he liked the cold weather. He liked that he was warm under his thick coat and the wool scarf wrapped snug around him.

“I’m looking at the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “And then just behind it, I see the Sydney Opera House.”

“We’re in Paris, by the way.”

He broke out in a grin. He knew, of course. He’d been excited for it, in spite of his condition. “The great thing about being blind is that you no longer need to be confined by the limits of reality.”

“I was under the impression that I married a blind man who couldn’t see, not a delusional who saw whatever he wanted to see.”

“Who’s the fool, then? The blind fool or the fool who married the blind fool?”

“I’m never going to escape this life, am I?”

He was still smiling. “Do you want to?”

There was a pause. He imagined Baz turning to look at him. And then he said, “You know I don’t want to.” That low, quiet rumble again. He swore he could kill a man for it. 

They fell silent after, contented simply to be with each other. Baz observed while Chiro thought. The River Seine flowed on unceasingly beneath them.

“So,” Baz spoke all of a sudden, “this has been...a fun honeymoon.”

“I like it,” Chiro insisted. “You know, we should come here more often.” He nudged his husband beside him. “You should use your money to buy a house here. Escape from all your problems back home.”

“We’ll always go back to them anyway, so what’s the use?” Baz replied. “The problems won’t stop until we die.”

“I married for companionship, not for the inheritance.”

“That’s awfully sweet of you, Chiro.”

“But the money is convenient.”

“I knew you would say that.”

“But you still married me,” Chiro reminded him, grinning into space. He played with the cold metal band around his finger, a complicated thing that resembled a bird with its wings forming the loop. The proposal was so simple: Baz cooked dinner, and then he handed him the open ring box and let him figure it out. Then he asked him and he accepted. And that was that. “You ever wondered,” he began suddenly, “where we’d be now if we hadn’t met each other?”

“Sometimes I try, but it’s difficult,” Baz said after a minute. “I can’t even remember what my days were like without you.”

“More peaceful.”

“But less meaningful.”

He might have blushed—if he had the capacity for it. But he just smiled and let his happiness speak for itself. “I can’t imagine it either. But sometimes, it scares me.” His fingers sought for Baz’s to slip between them. “When I was starting to lose my eyesight, I always envisioned myself in an empty room, all by myself. Even with a cat as your life companion, that’s hard. But along came you, and you were there when I went completely blind.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine it happening without you by my side, crying like a baby.”

“I can’t believe you convinced me to marry you.”

He snickered. “I’m not about to let go of a man who’d cry for me like that. Think about it: what if we never realized how important we were to each other? What if, after we met in the children’s hospital, we just went on with our lives, not knowing what we missed?”

“Then we’ll meet again in the next life,” Baz answered easily, perhaps throwing a shrug with it. “And the next. On and on, until we grow old together, or our lives are spent.”

He turned quickly to Baz’s voice, eyebrows curling. There was something about what he said that felt like an echo. Like he knew the words even before Baz had spoken them, but he never knew about their existence until then. He tasted them again in his tongue, repeating ponderously to himself, “On and on...until we grow old together...or our lives are spent.”

He faced Baz’s approximate direction. “Where have you heard of that before?”

“Don’t know. Somehow, it’s always been at the back of my head.”

“Huh.” Chiro faced the city across him again. “Is that so? I thought they sounded familiar.”

“Did I get it from one of your movies, then? I mean the stuff you used to watch before you went blind.”

Chiro shrugged. “Beats me. I believe in it, though.”

“As you should,” Baz affirmed. And that was that.

They stood again in silence. Watching. Listening. Thinking. All around them, the city flowed like the river they stood over, unceasing in its motion.

Soon after, they, too, joined it, walking down the bridge, hand in hand.


End file.
